This is an example that really annoyed me...in an attempt to compress what 'bindi' signifies, it essentializes it teenvogue.com/story/coachell
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oh man now I want to do those for generic pop cultural fashion things
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A part nat-am white woman once tweeted with zero irony, "don't use 'spirit animal', that's appropriation, use a word like avatar instead' :D
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yeah I remember that - essentializing in the sense of fixing meanings and making them legible
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I think before I lived in India I thought bindis had one particular fixed meaning and it was Extremely Spiritual
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until people were like "uh it's a fashion"
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also a pimple cream commercial that suggested that teens might cover a forehead pimple with a large bindi, suggesting low sacredness
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The power gradient part of the argument is legit, but I think it is vastly overapplied outside of clear cases like rap and R&B
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sorry no one will ever convince me that this is wrongly appropriative youtu.be/chzuvUFMeos
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Of course not. There's no real power gradient between black and hmong :D

